Working Philosophy
“Consulting to management is like living with tigers. It’s exhilarating, and you learn a lot, but
they make you do things right and earn their trust.”
--David Cook
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“The work of a
consultant requires a lot of thought, with constant refinement of skills in a
broad range of areas. The consultant
must be thinking constantly about the client’s needs and concerns, and will,
by nature, have ideas that are important and relevant to the work being done
for the client at all hours of the day and night and in all kinds of
settings. The consultant is
present to deliver solutions: reports,
publications, systems, classroom experiences, web pages, and much more. The secret to success
in this is very simple: Always deliver
the best solution you can, to specifications or better, on or ahead of schedule, and in the most economical way possible.
That’s how I do it.” --David Cook |
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Fees and Expenses |
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Working with People |
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Precise Thinking |
Precise Writing |
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“The most enduring and
difficult problem an independent consultant faces is in keeping his clients
reminded that they have hired the consultant to advise the client, and not
the other way around. When the
consultant is free to exercise his or her scholarship and provide the best
and most economical solution possible, things go smoothly and the client can
be assured of its money’s worth. This doesn’t mean that
the consultant should not be a good listener and be constantly attentive to
the needs, concerns, and opinions of the client—in fact, the consultant will
not succeed unless the client’s concerns are the consultant’s concerns and
the consultant pays attention to the client at all times. However, the client
hires the consultant because the consultant’s experience tells him or her
what works and what doesn’t, and the client must do the consultant the
courtesy (at least) of allowing the consultant to exercise the experience
that made him or her an expert—in fact, the client won’t get much out of the
consulting relationship if it doesn’t. Both the client and
the consultant must think in the most rational way possible, and the client
must follow the consultant’s guidance in accordance with the rational
approach. With this comes a
little-understood and infinitely valuable side benefit for the client in
using a consultant’s services: that
the client’s staff learn to think more clearly. Few things are of more
overall benefit to the client than this process, and it costs the client
nothing extra.” --David Cook |
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In technical fields, a
contractor is almost always a better solution than an employee. Contractors cost less, and—if they are competent
and honest—generally possess a more complete knowledge of their fields and
their work. Many employers feel more
secure with employees, but the truth is that a contractor often provides
better security for the future from the employer/client’s perspective. An employee is really
more likely to be “here today and gone tomorrow” than a contractor who is
working to build repeat business and a good reputation. When an employee is gone, that person’s
efforts and knowledge are now fully devoted to the next employer. A contractor, on the other hand, remains
available to the client even when the contractor is not specifically working
for the client. Certainly there are
contractors that are dishonest and incompetent, and a certain degree of
discernment is necessary. Generally,
an honest and reliable contractor will look and sound like one when you first
meet. The competent
contractor/consultant is relaxed and makes you feel confident in the
contractor’s ability and knowledge. A common concern among
those who consider using contractors is that the contractor will be
considered an employee by the Internal Revenue Service, and the client will
be assessed penalties for payroll taxes it will be told it should have
paid. The reality is that this problem
is easily remedied, and an honest contractor will be prepared to help make
sure the client can be confident of the contractor’s tax status. Here are the key
elements of a consultant-client relationship that will ensure that there is no
question about the contractor’s tax status:
Thus it is easy to be
sure the contractor will not be considered an employee, and the client need
not give the matter another thought.
The contractor should provide his or her own tools and methods where
practical. If the work requires a tool
that exceeds the contractor’s ability to purchase (for example, a satellite
or a cargo ship), it is legitimate for the client to allow the contractor to
use tools belonging to the client. In the typical
situation, however, where the deliverables specified for the project consist
of reports, user manuals, multi-media presentations, and other tangible
products of intellectual effort, the client may not specify that the
consultant use a specific tool or method.
(For example, the consultant chooses and provides the word processing
program best suited to the work at hand.) Also, the client may
not place the consultant/contractor under the supervision of an employee of
the client company. The relationship
must be one of mutual cooperation in which the client’s personnel provide
information and state preferences; however, to be considered an independent
contractor from the tax perspective, the consultant/contractor’s judgment
must be the final deciding factor in matters of the consultant’s expert
knowledge. If you follow these
simple rules: (The contractor can take
a loss or make a profit, and the contractor’s judgment governs in matters of
the contractor’s expert knowledge), the contractor cannot be considered to be
an employee. Both these rules are
best followed by having a clear written agreement. Some thoughts on written agreements will
come in the next section. |
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It’s the contractor/consultant’s
responsibility to provide a form of written agreement for the work to be
done. A good contractor uses form
agreements provided by an attorney or by a professional association’s legal
department. A well-written form
agreement is so clear that there will be no question that it provides
adequate protection for the client as well as for the contractor. A client should never
hesitate to have an agreement reviewed by its own attorney, and an honest
contractor will not be offended. The terms
of an agreement should always be negotiable.
Essentially, a client should expect the agreement to cover the
following subjects:
Typically, a
contractor will have a form agreement ready no later than the day the work
begins. In some situations, a simple
letter of agreement will be enough for a small project. For a contractor and client who know each
other well, an oral agreement may be sufficient, as long as the client has on
file a letter from the contractor certifying that the contractor obeys the law
and pays the required taxes. Each agreement,
whether long-form, a simple letter, or a handshake, should be accompanied by
a Purchase Order for the contractor’s use in requesting payment. A professional working
group like David A. Cook and Associates, Inc. may consist of a number of
professionals who prefer to work as separate contractors. In such a case, a separate agreement should
exist with each contractor, and the contractors may have an additional
agreement among themselves. The terms
of such an agreement should be disclosed to the client. Fulfilled agreement
should be kept on file by both parties for at least seven years. |
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The specialist has two
important attributes: 1. The ability to think in the broadest, most
far-ranging way possible. 2. The ability to focus on a specific issue or
problem. At first these two may
seem to contradict each other, but, in fact, they describe the tension
between two types of thinking that give the trained specialist the ability
required to solve specialized problems.
This is true if the specialist is a brain surgeon, a submarine
commander, or a publications developer. A brain surgeon has to
consider every aspect of the patient’s condition and the operation to be
performed, and have a complete knowledge of procedures, risks, potential
complications, the proper use of tools and instruments, and many other
factors. After considering all of
these thoughts, the surgeon then knows what to do and how to do it from
second to second and from millimeter to millimeter, and is able to focus
appropriately on getting the job done when the clock is running. A submarine commander must
have a thorough knowledge of the machinery, from nuclear engineering to
galley plumbing, weather, ocean geography, international law, and a wide
variety of other subjects. Then the
commander uses all of this knowledge, sometimes solving complex problems that
involve all of these matters at once in real time. The result is a solution that takes into
account everything that ensures the safety of vessel and crew, as well as the
security of the nation the submarine defends. A Consulting Publications Specialist follows exactly the same lines of thought, because the
consultant is the same kind of specialist as the surgeon or the
commander: The consultant understands
the basic subject matter and the surrounding constraints. Medicine, chemistry, electronics, microbiology,
policies and procedures, regulatory bodies, and business practices. The specialist then
uses all of this broad knowledge in real time—when the clock is ticking—to
solve your problem and produce new and ideal results for you, when you need
them. That’s the specialist
you need. Contact us today! |
Helping to Prevent Fraud and Accounting Problems
and Allegations of those Problems
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In addition to making
your enterprise more profitable and more manageable, a good document control
system with custom-tailored process documents serves as a powerful exhibit of
the integrity of your management processes and the credibility of the records
you present for inspection. A good
document control system is a deterrent to allegations of misconduct or fraud,
and may in some cases help you avoid having to tie up valuable resources for
in-depth investigations. Your document control
system ensures you can present precisely the kind of indestructible contemporaneous
records investigators want in the event questions should arise about your
record keeping or that of any business with which you are associated. The design of your
document control system is a tangible exhibit that anyone can understand,
that will show that your management team exercised good judgment and due
diligence in keeping records of its activities. Though most process documents are not
financial documents as such, they will either contain financial control
figures or show a one-to-one correspondence with records that do. In a typical product
development scheme, the initial planning documents will serve as a clear
narrative of the process through which the profitability
of the product was estimated, with detailed figures on the anticipated market
and the anticipated development and support costs. As product development
continues, your system will exhibit a clear document trail of every event
that related to that process. The
document librarian database serves as proof that every event that affects
your costs or productivity was uniformly recorded in a timely manner. The design of your internal process
document system can be expanded to incorporate any and all facets of the management
of your enterprise required to ensure that your records cannot be questioned
under reasonable conditions. Your document control
consultant will consult with your legal tax, and financial advisers to ensure
that the scope of the document control system is adequate for this purpose. When your product goes
to market, the document control system continues to follow it, making sure
the continuing costs are properly recorded and that the cycle is closed
between the estimates that were part of the original planning process and the
reality that ensued. You need a
complete understanding of all variations between estimated and actual costs
for strategic planning purposes. If
you obtain this understanding from a well-designed document control system, that
system makes the variations easy to account for, and helps deflect any
allegations of concealment or poor management practice. Finally, the document
control system will produce a complete archive of all the activity records of
the entire enterprise in permanent electronic form that can be kept for you
by a third party trustee, so that you can show beyond question that no
records have been altered. In the event that any
aspect of your activities is called into question, you will have the indexed
contemporaneous records at your fingertips on very short notice. In many cases it is
the untidy appearance of the records themselves that invites a detailed audit
or investigation. If you have a
document control system tailored to your enterprise, that
can retrieve any record on request, you start out on a solid footing that
often simplifies and shortens the process. |
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Talk to a Publications
Specialist First! (Or: “What have you got against “Tech Writers?”) See a discussion of the differences
and benefits (Narration and animation included). The job classification
“Tech(nical) Writer” has
become a popular one in the last two decades or so, and, in the process, the
distinguishing features of that profession have gotten lost in the workplace
shuffle. So it’s the term “Tech
Writer” that I object to, not the people who do that type of work. |
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If you are in need of
publications development services, do yourself a favor by using a Consulting
Publications Specialist first! The
consulting specialist can save you Tens of Thousands ($10,000s) or Hundreds
of Thousands ($100,000s) of dollars on a single project by ensuring that you
produce the exact publications you need, and that those publications are of
the highest possible quality. The Consulting
Publications Specialist can help ensure that your resources are used most
efficiently and that your publications development process enhances, unifies,
and simplifies the management and operation of the entire enterprise. A publications specialist does technical writing and illustrating, of
course, but the work of a publications specialist encompasses many more and
varied—and essential—tasks. |
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The Publications
Specialist then designs the organization of the publications, and secures
management approval to ensure that the information in the publication is
presented completely and correctly, so that your customer will best be able
to use your product! Next, the specialist
produces the publications according to the agreed-upon specifications and
other applicable rules and constraints, and to the highest standard of
accuracy, readability, and usefulness to the reader that can be achieved. |
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Finally, the
publications specialist takes the publications through the production process,
negotiating with printers, ISPs, media production firms, and others who will
see to it that the publications are realized in their final form to the
standard of quality you and your customers demand. Parts of this work can
be done by Technical Writers, but to fit all the pieces together, you need a
full-service specialist who can guide you in a cordial and informative manner
from the inception of the publications requirement to the day your customers
receive your product. A Consulting
Publications Specialist makes the process work and saves you time, energy,
and money, --David Cook |
More to come soon…
Copyright © 2002 by David
Cook. All rights reserved.